The Blazers are in a death spiral, it seems. Too many injuries and too little cohesion from the remaining players. They are consistently losing by 30 or more points and have tanked 5 games in a row now. Or is it six? Lost by 38 points to the Jazz last night, and I wasn’t at all sure they were going to break out of single digits in the first quarter. Even though they were getting good looks, everything was clanging off the rim. Well, next year we’ll be in MSP and rooting for the Timbermutts.
Wow, just like that, huh? Cold blooded! They will certainly be more fun to watch, admittedly.
Well, we’re moving to MSP, so there’s that. We’ll likely cheer for the Blazers when they play Minnesota, but ya gotta support your local teams. We’ll really miss the Portland Thorns playing for the NWSL, but will likely still cheer them on. Minnesota now has a women’s team, also. Honestly, I’ve never been a rabid fan of any sports team, although I was a real fan of the Celtics for years back in the Bird days. And I really don’t mind it when the Blazers lose, as long as they are playing smart basketball. They’ve been fun to watch since Lillard has been out, as he slows the tempo and tends to run and gun rather than pass the ball. But right now, with Simons and Nurk sitting out, they’re kinda rudderless.
(Bold mine). Not necessarily. I moved from Indianapolis to Hampton Roads, Virginia in 2004, and still root for the Pacers and Colts. And I took up rooting for the Nationals.
Toronto has been frustrating to watch with VanVleet injured and Siakam and Trent being inconsistent with the threes and paint. But things are already looking better. Hopefully the bench depth returns.
Trent Jr. on fire tonight as the Raptors best Phoenix. 41 points? They played good all game. Wasn’t sure if they could do it. The Suns did not have Chris Paul playing, but the Raptors lacked Anunoby.
We were down 51 points at one time in the Jazz game, which makes them hard to enjoy. I know it won’t last forever, but it’s sure painful right now.
The Boston Celtics officially retired Kevin Garnett’s #5 jersey, which now sits alongside former teammate Paul Pierce’s #34, and during his ceremony, he buried the hatchet with Ray Allen, telling him it was good to see him there and “you next, dog.”
The Celtics brought in Garnett and Allen in 2007 and they led the biggest one-season turnaround in NBA history, going from the dregs of the lottery to the franchise’s 17th NBA championship in 2008.
Minnesota’s Karl-Anthony Towns scored a career-high 60 points to go with 17 rebounds, going 7-of-11 from 3-point range as the Timberwolves beat the Spurs.
He became the fifth NBA center to ever score 60 points in a game, and the first since Shaquille O’Neal back in 2000.
He’s also the first player in NBA history, full stop, to achieve 60 points, 15 rebounds, and 60% three-point shooting in a game.
Lebron, you fucking asshole.
Do the right thing - APOLOGIZE for this.
Reprehensible.
Not even a CALL for this - DOUBLY fucked up.
James is a sore loser. Had a rough night against a tough Raptors team.
Kyrie Irving dropped 60, a Nets franchise record, on the Magic. With Kevin Durant’s 53-point performance in the previous game, this makes the first time in NBA history that two teammates have had 50-point games in back-to-back contests.
I find it amazing this has never happened before. Especially when back in the day scores were higher.
Hard to believe Wilt didn’t do that.
Glad to see the Raptors have won five straight games. Best in the league, and including teams like the Suns and Clippers. And the Lakers - a team I do not understand - they would seem to have many good players, yet… well, we’ll see how Lebron does tonight. Go Toronto!
Very amusing the Wizards still have a better record than the Lakers. It’s only half a game difference right now, but still. 
The Lakers are the classic example of the whole being less than the parts. They have multiple great players, but they aren’t complementary great players. They magnify each other’s flaws at worst, don’t fully leverage their strengths at best. Everyone and their cousin thought the Russell Westbrook trade was a bad idea when it happened and for once the hot take has been proven correct. It was subtraction by addition par excellence.
The pain continues as Simons and Nurkic continue to be sidelined. The team tries hard and really came close last night against the Nets, but just ran out of gas after a frenetic first half that saw them up by 15. Winslow even had a block on Durant; not an easy thing to do. They probably shouldn’t have ordered in turkey and red wine for halftime.
Toronto played okay during the Lakers. Up by three with ten seconds left, they turned it over and allowed a three. In overtime, they looked fatigued. Let’s keep these mistakes for the regular season.
Portland has really not done well since the All Star Break but I hope things turn around for them.
A few days ago after the Pacers’ blowout loss to Memphis, our social media crew had jokes:
He certainly did, he just doesn’t count as his own teammate. He probably had more consecutive 50 point games than everyone else put together. Like, if you counted the entire NBA as one player, Wilt probably still scored 50 points on more consecutive nights. His 100 point game, for example, was his 4th straight night with 60 plus, and then he had 58 the next night.
He had a couple of teammates who were good scorers, but none of them ever went for 50 in a single game, and certainly none of them ever did while Wilt was on the team… because Wilt was on the team. Therein lies the rarity of it, I think. It’s a fun stat. 15 or 20 players historically could go for 50 with regularity, another 20 or so did it a few times, and then a hundred or so had insane nights one night. Of the guys who did it more than a few times, it’s only really the Lakers and then teams in the last few years where any of them have been teammates, and both the freak occurrences and the big gun nights are much less likely to happen on a team that has another big gun on it.
Now that I think about it, what you’d really want is a situation with either an injury to one of the big guns on the night that he scores 50 (weird, rare) or you’d want some kind of unprecedented situation like, say, an insane person and a vaccine mandate so that you had a perfectly healthy, historically great player who was just hopping in and out of your lineup. And here we are.